Review by Choice Review
This well-written book tries to tell the story of the Nile explorers and their impact on central Africa. Through the first 300 pages, in which Jeal relates the story of the explorers, he succeeds admirably. In the last 100 pages, where he compresses a great deal of political history, he is much less successful. The explorer section's success comes from its focus on the lives of these men and women. Defending heroes, especially John Speke, and exposing villains, particularly Sir Richard Burton, keeps readers turning pages quite happily. While emphasizing the genuine dangers of illness and terrain, the author also points out that the territory through which these people passed was far from unoccupied. The explorers encountered nearly constant warfare among the tribes and with Arab slavers. That meant triumph or failure had as much to do with diplomatic skills as with stamina. The Africans who occupied this land could not fathom why the Europeans were willing to die to locate the Nile's source. "It's only water," as one of the African chiefs reputedly said. Anyone with an interest in central African exploration should enjoy this book. Summing Up: Recommended. General and undergraduate collections. R. E. Schreiber emeritus, Indiana University South Bend
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
IN the early 1870s in what is now Zambia, David Livingstone, the greatest of all Victorian explorers, led several expeditions in search of the source of the Nile. At times, he could barely walk, ulcers having chewed through the "muscle, tendon and bone" of his feet. Riddled with malaria, plagued with piles and weakened by pneumonia, he had pulled out several of his rotting teeth using strong thread and a heavy pistol. He had been attacked by roasting heat, pouring rain, tick fever, hostile slavers and leeches "as dose as smallpox." By 1873, he had an excruciatingly painful blood clot in his intestine the size of a fist. In this extremity of suffering, he found time to appreciate the "sweet" voice of a tree frog, but it is another entry in his diary - of truly towering understatement - that most perfectly sums up the wry fortitude of men like Livingstone: "It is not all pleasure this exploration." The men (and occasionally women) who went in search of the headwaters of Africa's longest river displayed superhuman resilience and courage, and the all-too-human fraiities of vanity, cruelty and petty-minded ness. But in an age when the earth is Google-flat, its every comer accessible from an armchair, Tim Jeal's book is a reminder of just how tough, uncompromising and bitchy those Nile adventurers were. "Explorers of the Nile" is a brilliant, scholarly and at times almost unreadably vivid account of the two decades in the middle of the 19th century when the search for the Nile's source in central Africa was at its height, told through the interlocking stones of Livingstone Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke, James Grant, Samuel Baker and Henry Morton Stanley. These men were fired by different impulses - religion, scientific inquiry and a thirst for fame - but they were not driven (at least not primarily by a desire to stamp British imperial authority on the empty spaces of the map. That would come later. Less dramatically, Jeal's book goes on to trace the unforeseen political consequences of the opening up of Africa and colonization, from the appalling atrocities in Uganda under Idi Amin to the contemporary horrors of Darfur. The explorers, with their elaborate facial hair, overweening confidence and almost boundless energy, came not to rule but to solve an ancient mystery that had intrigued geographers since the time of the pharaohs: where in the vast interior of Africa did the Nile rise, with enough volume to cross thousands of miles of desert and flood Egypt every year? That riddle had fascinated Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Nero dispatched two centurions to try to find the source. For the Victorians, the grip of this conundrum went far beyond its scientific significance: it became a leitmotif for exploration itself, a quest comparable in emotive and symbolic force to the race to the moon in a later century. These gentleman-adventurers were ready to submit to any hardship in pursuit of the river's source, and prepared to stoop pretty low to claim credit for having found it. They battled nature, and they scrapped ferociously with one another. Jeal's most notable achievement is to lay bare the poisonous rivalry between Speke and Burton, recalibrating their places in history. In February 1858, Burton and the man he forever referred to as his "subordinate" reached the shores of Lake Tanganyika after a journey of quite astonishing unpleasantness. Burton was so ill he had to be carried for the last 200 miles. Speke's raging ophthalmia meant he could barely see the lake. Burton subsequently contracted ulcers on his tongue and could hardly speak. Meanwhile, a small black beetle flew into Speke's ear and "began with exceeding vigor, like a rabbit at a hole, to dig violently away at my tympanum." He stuck a penknife into his ear, killed the beetle and wounded himself so badly that for months he was without half his hearing. Deaf, blind, dumb and crippled, these two companions shared a level of hardship that ought to have forged a bond for life. But they detested each other. Burton was convinced that Lake Tanganyika must represent the Nile's headwaters. Speke left him and journeyed on, more than 200 miles north, to find the waters known to the Arabs as Lake Ukerewe, which he would rename Lake Victoria. After calculating its height above sea level, he concluded that this, and not Burton's lake, must be the source. Speke was right, Burton wrong, but it was Burton who won fame, a knighthood and an enduring afterlife as the colorful, irrepressible "Ruffian Dick." "Discovery is mostly my mania," Burton said, but there was also something maniacal in his determination to destroy his former companion's reputation. The day before the two men were due to debate their theories in public, Speke was killed during a shooting outing when he climbed over a wall and accidentally fired his shotgun into his side. The stage was clear for Burton, who lost no time rubbishing his opponent and declaring that he had committed suicide. Speke has remained in Burton's shadow ever since, a pallid, neutered figure compared with the red-blooded Burton, the subject of so much breathless biographical attention over the years. Jeal's singular achievement is to rescue Speke from his unwarranted relegation to the second rank, not only establishing his credentials as a pioneering explorer but unearthing at the same time a subtle and attractive character who was far from a prude. He was happy to offer sex tips to African chiefs, and his love, with "overflowing heart," for an 18-year-old Baganda woman named Méri is both profoundly moving and entirely at odds with the prevailing attitudes of his race and class. Alan Moorehead's international best seller "The White Nile," published in 1960, did much to open up this region to exploration by historians. Jeal goes further and deeper by returning to primary sources, notably the original journals of Speke, and in so doing offers a subtle reconsideration of the legends. He has traveled in revisionist territory before: his 1973 account of Livingstone took some of the sanctimony out of the patron saint of British exploration; his 2007 biography "Stanley" demonstrated that the Welsh-born journalist-explorer was not the brute of myth. Rehabilitating Speke's reputation is Jeal's main mission in "Explorers of the Nile," but he performs another important rescue mission in giving due credit to the hundreds of Africans who made it possible for these white men to answer a question that was not, in African eyes, worth asking. ("It is only water," one chief told Livingstone, baffled by all the fuss.) Wherever possible, Jeal gives names and personalities to the guides, translators and porters who supported, escorted, steered, fed, protected and not infrequently carried these explorers into the heart of Africa, in order to "discover" places that Africans already knew were there. When Livingstone finally died, soon after noting that the pleasures of exploration had their limits, his African porters carried his dried and salted body back to Zanzibar. That journey took five months. Ten of them died on the way. They knew they would be paid at the end, but as Jeal suggests, "their principal motivation was to honor a great man by taking his body back to his own people along with the diaries and notebooks which he had kept with such care." By the time the Royal Geographical Society finally got around to issuing a medal in recognition of their efforts, most of Livingstone's African helpers had vanished back into the bush. It takes one kind of bravery to endure extreme discomfort and risk life for earthly, scientific or celestial glory, but quite another to do so for honor alone. Livingstone's men carrying his remains to the coast. For the Victorians, finding the source of the Nile was like the race for the moon. Ben Macintyre is the author, most recently, of "Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 4, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review
The eccentric Victorian explorer Richard Burton once confessed that discovery is mostly my mania. Over the course of the last half of the nineteenth century, a handful of larger-than-life characters that included Burton, David Livingstone, John Hanning Speke, and Henry Morton Stanley embodied this mania as they battled lethal diseases, invidious slave traders, and unreceptive indigenous tribes in their grand attempts to open the Dark Continent to Christianity, enlightenment, and eventual exploitation. Author of the acclaimed Stanley (2007), Jeal recounts each perilous expedition to unlock the secrets of the Nile watershed with an astonishing clarity and depth that brings to life the hazardous environs of equatorial Africa. In the course of his superb narrative, Jeal rescues the historically much maligned character of Speke, celebrates the humanitarian spirit of Livingstone, and astutely assesses the long-term consequences of the imperialist scramble for Africa that ensued in the wake of Victorian explorers, including the horrendous civil wars of Uganda, Kenya, and Sudan. Jeal's judicious account is a must-read for anyone hoping to understand the internal dynamics of modern state-building in central Africa.--Odom, Brian Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Having authored biographies of individual explorers, e.g., Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer, Jeal now presents an overall account of the Victorian-era struggle to locate the true source of the Nile through the expeditions of Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant, Samuel and Florence Baker, David Livingstone, and Henry Morton Stanley. These explorers faced disease, harsh terrain, and hostile tribes-and, in some cases, bitter rivalries and fierce public criticism. Jeal gives particular attention to the conflict between compatriots-turned-enemies Burton and Speke, and his subjectivity is evident as he attempts to exonerate Speke of several allegations that ruined his reputation. He also briefly examines the "Scramble for Africa" and the horrific effects of aggressive colonization on the continent and its peoples. -VERDICT Jeal's sympathies, particularly toward Speke and Stanley, can overwhelm the text, but for the most part this is a thorough and gripping account of the trials these explorers faced both in Africa and at home. Recommended for readers who enjoy books on African exploration, e.g. Alan Moorehead's classics The White Nile and The Blue Nile, or those seeking a fresh viewpoint on some of the Victorian era's most famous adventurers.-Kathleen McCallister, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An account of the hardships, backstabbing and fierce determination of a group of British adventurers who explored the headwaters of the Nile River.Jeal, the author of a well-received biography of the explorer Henry Morton Stanley (Stanley: the Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer, 2007 etc.) and an earlier biography of David Livingstone, here seeks to rescue the reputation of an earlier member of the tribe, John Hanning Speke. In the mid 19th century, Speke discovered the source of the river, "the planet's most elusive secret." Speke was led by Richard Francis Burton, the British intelligence officer, travel writer and explorer most famous for his translation ofThe Arabian Nights.Jeal describes the friction that developed between the two men during their expedition, made worse by the travails of the journey, which included ulcers caused by parasites, malaria and, for Speke, a serious spear wound. After the two explorers discovered Lake Tanganyika, Burton was forced by illness to stop while Speke continued on to the southern shore of Lake Victoria, the actual source. Burton's efforts to discredit Speke's discovery included deliberate misrepresentation of water flows in the region, and it was Stanley who later confirmed the outflow from Lake Victoria to the Nile. Jeal offers rich descriptions of the African kingdoms in the region and the still-flourishing slave trade, and the larger-than life cast of characters includes Livingstone, Stanley and several lesser figures.An enjoyable adventure story. For a broader scope, see Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost (1998).]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
